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FOLLOWING MONEY IN 2016 PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

An Arizona Senator and a rookie Arizona Congressman - both Republicans - had two very different takes last night about recent Trump/Russia developments. One described the Monday bombshell report from the Washington Post as "rumors" from the "radicalized media" while the other focused on the broadening scandal culture engulfing the Trump Administration.

Senator John McCain was first, accepting the Freedom Award from an organization that he has

chaired for many years and opining on the need for the Republicans to do more than confirm Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court if they wish to maintain the majority in Congress next year.

As he has before, he expressed the view that more shoes will be dropping and he noted that the "Trump scandals" were reaching "Watergate size and scale." His comments came in front of the International Republican Institute that he has led for more than 20 years*.

Here is a one-minute-plus clip from his remarks:

Approximately an hour later, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ5) took to the KTAR (92.3FM, Phoenix) airwaves to trade notes with Reality Check talk show host Darin Damme. After joking that he might be "certifiably crazy" to want to be in Congress in this day and age, Biggs went on to dismiss the "radical media" as being the real problem in Washington, that the Washington Post's unnamed sources inside the Trump/Lavrov meeting last week might be made up. "That's dubious until I see some real substantive evidence, it's just going to be, be a rumor."

"The writer of the story needs to be called in to question," said Biggs, pointing out that news reporters have "flat out made up stuff." He started to say that "odds are" the story is fake, before backing off and saying it is a possibility. The story "imperils America's future," Biggs said.

Biggs' office declined Arizona's Politics' requests to comment on whether the Trump Administration's claim that Trump's disclosures (that were apparently the Israelis to disclose or not) in the meeting were "wholly appropriate could co-exist with the anonymous sources' characterizations, or on how he interpreted the President's tweets that he had disclosed "facts" that he had a right to de-classify on the fly. Arizona's Politics also asked whether the Congressman shares host Damme's views on "the Deep State's" efforts to damage President Trump. (The article will be updated with his comments, as needed.)

(thanks to KPNX's Brahm Resnik for helping locate the McCain video.)* McCain's IRI caused a small amount of controversy in his 2008 Presidential campaign. Former Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe is now a Vice Chair of the Institute.

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